Entertainment Reviews of Various sorts..
Dec. 28th, 2009 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Let's start with some Book Foo, since I haven't done one in a while and they year's winding down...
Finished: Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan collection, by Brian Stableford (count as 6 books) (reread)
Started: Nebula Award Winners 27
Can't really comment too much on Swan Songs again because I've read it so many times, but I still enjoy it, and still kind of long for a follow-up story. One amusing change, the main character's voice I now hear as Tim Roth from "Lie To Me", instead of House, from House.
Finished: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
Slight spoilery thoughts behind the cut (mostly back-of-the-book level), but short version: Rather liked it, I'd read the sequels eventually, felt sort of modern Heinleinian. For those unfamiliar, the story is about a 75 year old man who joins the space marines, basically - they recruit seniors for their experience, and use their high technology to rejuvenate them which is the main reason anybody signs up because it's not available on Earth.
After that it's a bunch of fighting aliens and him adapting to his situation.
It's a solid SF story, and a couple cool alien races I guess. I don't think it's ever going to be one of my favorites, but I can certainly see myself rereading it again, and picking up the sequels, and it's very good for a first novel.
I was a little annoyed at the... overly evil aliens they seemed to be (that is, there seemed to be almost no potential for cooperation with anybody, all aliens, even intelligent ones, were pretty much at war with each other), but that might be fixed somewhat in later books.
Started and Finished: The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (short stories)
Started: The 1982 Annual Year's Best SF (short stories)
Standard short story collection reaction: Some enjoyable stories, some that aren't very memorable at all, and some I've already read. Unfortunately the best of the collection are in the 'already read' category (as they so often are - the good ones are reprinted regularly). Best of the new-to-me was probably Eyes of Amber, by Joan D. Vinge.
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Now on to Doctor Who. I suppose I should first talk about the stinker that was The End of Time Part One. Not very much, I hope, unless I go off on a rant, but there will be spoilers.
You know, the moment I saw, in the trailer, the Master's head go transparent-skull-head, I had worries about this ep. And they were justified. Instead of a cool Master, we get hungry hungry hippo, chowing down and pontificating and running away, shooting magic lightning bolts, jumping like a grasshopper, and with magical smelly Time Lord senses the Doctor shares. Yes, now Time Lords SMELL EACH OTHER. OVER LONG DISTANCES. WTF?! I SAY AGAIN, WTF?!
The Master's ressurection... I don't mind the idea that he set up a plan to bring himself back, but the idea that he has a whole cult dedicated to it who willingly sacrifice their life energy to do it (and all it takes is a couple of chemicals!), and that Lucy has secretly been working with a counter-organization who's able to analyze the SUPER-ADVANCED-MAGIC-SCIENCE OF TIME LORDS AND PRODUCE A CHEMICAL WHICH WILL GUM UP THE WORKS).
Lots of strange out of place Obama love. What the hell was that all about? Was it meant of a parody of his supposed European love? A straight-faced lovegasm over the man? I don't know, but it didn't work for me either way.
Really, it's mostly just RTD's usual flaws, only magnified. The story suffers from Just So syndrome, where everything happens because that's the way RTD needs to happen, rather than as a logical consequence of any of the past stories. RTD wants Wilf to be the only one who remembers his dreams, so he does. He wants a comment about how regeneration is a little like death, so he has Wilf bring that up (maybe I'm wrong, but... when did Ten and Wilf ever discuss the intricacies of Time Lord regeneration? It's not like Wilf ever saw him regenerate. He might have mentioned it to Donna but not until they'd started travelling together regularly, and IIRC, she seemed pretty surprised about the whole thing when it looked about to happen). He wants Ten and the Master to have a long chase, so they sense each other Highlander style. He wants Lucy to have a moment of redemption, so he makes her have planned a way to disrupt his resurrection. None of it makes sense, but he doesn't care, he wants his plot and damn the consequences! The man can not plot. He can write the occasional nice character moment, but that should be the basic requirement of being a professional writer, not something where basic competency at it is expected to make up for your deficiency in other areas of writing. Le Sigh.
Anyway, I'll move on to the good. I know I'm probably in the minority of this, but I actually liked the Master's Master Race thing at the end. It was ridiculous, but it was pleasantly ridiculous, unlike the rest, which was just... wha?
If you take out all the crap, you've got the seed of an idea which is pretty good. The Master returns, and his plans accidentally open the door for the Time Lords and a universe-destroying threat. But as always it's the how. And the how pretty well sucked.
I also liked the Time Lord's return, even though I kind of saw it coming. Aside from the Daleks, Cybermen, Davros, and the Master, the Time Lords as a group are the last possible "big bad" for Ten, really. Every other enemy are just the sort of "every day" enemy, that the Doctor might be in a little danger but it's not a big deal. But this group are, to me, the only ones left for whom even the Doctor really worries when they get involved.
I'm not a super fan of the "last of the Time Lords" mojo the Doctor's had since the rebooted series. I prefer him being a renegade from his people who can and will get involved if he becomes a pain, and sometimes send him to do something instead of just wandering around coming upon trouble wherever he goes.
Also, having Time Lords return is probably the only plausible way for the Master to get a new Tardis, and he needs one in order to be an ongoing threat who could pop up at any time. And I think, if they stick around, Moffat could probably do well with them being in existence. I hope we don't get TOO detailed a look at the Time War, because I do not want RTD handling that. I do want to see it, but I don't want it from him.
I'm calling it now. I'm probably wrong, but what the hell. Timothy Dalton is... THE VALEYARD! He even looks a little like him!
I'm also calling Wilf as another Time Lord in hiding with a fobwatch type device, which makes Donna genetically part Time Lord (it's was just technobabblicly suppressed until she got zapped with Ten's energy) which will let her survive the Time Lord memories she got from Ten's meta-crisis..
In other Doctor Who news, I also completed one of my major geek life goals. I've now watched (or read a transcript of) every Classic Who episode. Yay, me! My Doctor Who credentials are now no longer a source of secret shame! I won't go on to the audios or novels, not because I doubt there's some good stuff there, but a) I think at this point it's generally established they're non-canon, and b) the things that annoy me about Doctor Who, I think would REALLY REALLY REALLY annoy me in book form. I hold books to a higher standard than TV. And I suppose there's a c), too. I've always found audios hard to process. I'm more visual, I suppose. If my eyes aren't engaged, my mind wanders and the sound just sort of becomes a vague backdrop to something else. There've been many times that I've wanted to listen to something and got up and started reading something halfway through while it was still playing, just because my eyes needed to do something.
So, let's talk about Seven.
The Doctor: I quite liked McCoy's incarnation of the Doctor. He's a little quirky, has a dark side, but is still pleasant enough to be around that I could see travelling with. On my scale of "Doctors I'd most like to travel with", he's probably above Two, not counting companions, below if companions get included. They're quite similar. On the watchability scale, not counting the quality of the stories, the Doctor's entertaining enough that
The Stories: Here's the big problem with Seven's run. The stories just... well, stank. Even the best of the run were the ones that would have been the mediocre stories of any other run. I think the best was Remembrance of the Daleks. Curse of Fenric wasn't bad, Battlefield was okay if only for the Brigadier, but everything else was pretty lame. I have a bit of a perverse fondness for Paradise Towers, even though I should by all accounts dislike it.
The rest? There was a lot of awful stuff. And, it felt very 80s. You know how there are certain plots that crop up on every SF show? A repeating Groundhog Day time loop, for example, or the paralell world. Well, some of McCoy's run felt like they were running through the 80s examples of those: Paradise Towers "OMG A HUGE SKYSCRAPER IN WHICH CIVILIZATION HAS FALLEN"... Happiness Patrol: Happiness is Mandatory (somehow that concept feels extremely 80s-SF, even if the Prisoner did it best in the 60s). A circus with a RAPPING RINGMASTER! AND EVIL CLOWNS!
They also suffered a lot, from some degree or another, to sort of jumpy plotlines with dodgy resolutions. Or maybe that was in part my lack of interest in the plot and missing points. Either way, a failure on their part. The biggest one was where the Doctor and Mel team up with charming rogue Sabalom Glitz, and Mel sticks around to keep him out of trouble at the end... uhm, the guy SOLD HIS CREW to an evil guy who turned them into automatons. And you knew that all along. At the very best, even if you ignore the thefts and probable murders he committed, you just ran off to have jolly space adventures with a guy who sold people into slavery.
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is possibly my pick for the worst Doctor Who ever, even thought I did like Mags (and, even though I knew it would never happened, kind of wish she would have been a companion).
The Companions: Only two of them, Mel and Ace. Mel got a little annoying at times, but otherwise she fits into the mold of "generic 20th century modern companion girl" . Seriously, if I hadn't read in a wiki that she was a computer scientist, I'd never have known. She was just average girl, good for screaming and a kind word, an occasional plucky rescue and reminding the Doctor to do his exercises. I will not remember her for much in a few years. Ace, on the other hand, was a bit of a pleasant surprise, especially after such an inauspicious beginning. I mean seriously, her acting (or the direction of such) in her debut episode, Dragonfire, was SO BAD I worried her whole run would be unbearable. But she improved dramatically by the next time around, and by the end, I actually quite liked her. Her obsession with blowing things up was kind of fun, and they did some nice work exploring her family and personal history. She's one of those companions I wouldn't mind seeing them revisit in the new series, to reveal what she's been up to (several alternative fates have been explored in various media, but they're all no-canon) or how she left the Doctor.
So, let's do my personal rankings. I'm going to leave 8 out of the rankings entirely because he only had one movie to go on (and the audios and books which, as I said, I'll not be going into). It's just too hard to place him based on that, I got very little sense of him, and it was all immediately post-regeneration. Otherwise, we go Best-to-Worst.
Best run, classic (it's a little unfair to directly compare runs from the new and old series): Davison's. Great stories and great companions make up for a somewhat bland (though still likeable) Doctor. Followed by: Two, Four, One, Six, Seven, and Three.
Best Doctor: (ignoring story quality, just performance and Doctorish-ness alone)
Most Like to Watch: Four, Nine, Seven, Two, Ten, Five, One, Six, Three
Most Like to Travel With (solo): Five, Nine, Ten, Four, Seven, Two, One, Three, Six
Best Companions:
Teams: Zoe and Jaime, followed by Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa, followed by Romana and K-9, followed by Ian, Susan, and Barbara. All other teams aren't really memorable.
Individual rankings: This is really hard to do. There are so many of them. So I'm just going to name my favorites and my least favorites without an attempt to rank them. Everybody else is in the middle.
Favorites: Jack, Mickey, Jaime, Zoe, Donna, K-9, Leela, Tegan
Least Favorites: Turlough, Peri, Rose (only because she seemed to become selfish at the end of her run, like her love for the Doctor was the only thing that mattered in the universe), Kamelion (poorly handled)
Unmemorables: These are the characters who are so forgettable that I can barely recall anything they've done. I can't say they're bad, but they've made very little impression on me: Steven Taylor, Dodo Chaplet, Polly, Ben Jackson, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant.
Likely to join the unmemorables after enough time has passed: Mel, Martha (pleasant and all but I don't think I'm going to recall her very well in say, 10 years, unless she keeps popping up), Harry Sullivan
(Notice a trend? Most of them are "contemporary human companions")
Now that I'm finished Old School Doctor Who, I'll need something new to watch weekend mornings. I suppose I could catch up on some movies I've been missing.
Oh, Movies, I almost forgot. I've seen some recently. Saw Avatar over the weekend. It's pretty much like I've been hearing in the reviews. Looks fantastic, not just effects, but the whole design of all the creatures of the world. Story, not so much. Kind of an old story, which isn't bad, but I'd hoped for more. Supposedly Cameron has two sequels planned, but if he does, I hope (speculative spoilers ahoy) that he abandons the Na'vi completely. I hope the Avatar concept is explored on a completely NEW world where Avatars are used, but with a completely different story, not involving a person going 'native', but just... something else that explores the limits of that technology. Or maybe somebody getting accidentally trapped inside his Avatar and having to adapt to no longer being human. I mean, you could do a lot with it - have a technologically advanced, but hostile, alien species, for example, and send an Avatar in on a spy mission.
I know it's a longshot, but you never know, Cameron does seem to have a thing for exploring human 'enhancement' through artificial bodies (from the exoskeleton loaders in Aliens to the Avatars, to the ride-inside warbots of the military in Avatars).
I also can't wait till this level of effects filters down into regular TV budget range, it would be a great way to make much better looking aliens.
Also finally got around to seeing Zombieland, with Woody Harrleson and... a couple other people who's names I never got. Unfortunately some of the best and most surprising bits had been pre-spoiled for me, but still, it's an awful fun comedic zombie movie. Maybe not a Shaun of the Dead level, but a lot of fun. I don't think I ever laughed out loud, but I had a smile on my face pretty well consistently, and would love to see sequels.
And, before I go, like I mentioned last post, I got a gift certificate from the comic store, and I'm planning on going down there in a few days, so I'm throwing it open... any recommendations? I'm not 100% sure if I'll go for TPB collections or some kind of merchandise, or a combination of the two, but I'm open for suggestions if there's something you think is really not to be missed. I may not take your advice, but I'll consider it, and maybe it'll remind me of something I'd always wanted to get but had forgotten about.
Finished: Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan collection, by Brian Stableford (count as 6 books) (reread)
Started: Nebula Award Winners 27
Can't really comment too much on Swan Songs again because I've read it so many times, but I still enjoy it, and still kind of long for a follow-up story. One amusing change, the main character's voice I now hear as Tim Roth from "Lie To Me", instead of House, from House.
Finished: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
Slight spoilery thoughts behind the cut (mostly back-of-the-book level), but short version: Rather liked it, I'd read the sequels eventually, felt sort of modern Heinleinian. For those unfamiliar, the story is about a 75 year old man who joins the space marines, basically - they recruit seniors for their experience, and use their high technology to rejuvenate them which is the main reason anybody signs up because it's not available on Earth.
After that it's a bunch of fighting aliens and him adapting to his situation.
It's a solid SF story, and a couple cool alien races I guess. I don't think it's ever going to be one of my favorites, but I can certainly see myself rereading it again, and picking up the sequels, and it's very good for a first novel.
I was a little annoyed at the... overly evil aliens they seemed to be (that is, there seemed to be almost no potential for cooperation with anybody, all aliens, even intelligent ones, were pretty much at war with each other), but that might be fixed somewhat in later books.
Started and Finished: The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (short stories)
Started: The 1982 Annual Year's Best SF (short stories)
Standard short story collection reaction: Some enjoyable stories, some that aren't very memorable at all, and some I've already read. Unfortunately the best of the collection are in the 'already read' category (as they so often are - the good ones are reprinted regularly). Best of the new-to-me was probably Eyes of Amber, by Joan D. Vinge.
-
Now on to Doctor Who. I suppose I should first talk about the stinker that was The End of Time Part One. Not very much, I hope, unless I go off on a rant, but there will be spoilers.
You know, the moment I saw, in the trailer, the Master's head go transparent-skull-head, I had worries about this ep. And they were justified. Instead of a cool Master, we get hungry hungry hippo, chowing down and pontificating and running away, shooting magic lightning bolts, jumping like a grasshopper, and with magical smelly Time Lord senses the Doctor shares. Yes, now Time Lords SMELL EACH OTHER. OVER LONG DISTANCES. WTF?! I SAY AGAIN, WTF?!
The Master's ressurection... I don't mind the idea that he set up a plan to bring himself back, but the idea that he has a whole cult dedicated to it who willingly sacrifice their life energy to do it (and all it takes is a couple of chemicals!), and that Lucy has secretly been working with a counter-organization who's able to analyze the SUPER-ADVANCED-MAGIC-SCIENCE OF TIME LORDS AND PRODUCE A CHEMICAL WHICH WILL GUM UP THE WORKS).
Lots of strange out of place Obama love. What the hell was that all about? Was it meant of a parody of his supposed European love? A straight-faced lovegasm over the man? I don't know, but it didn't work for me either way.
Really, it's mostly just RTD's usual flaws, only magnified. The story suffers from Just So syndrome, where everything happens because that's the way RTD needs to happen, rather than as a logical consequence of any of the past stories. RTD wants Wilf to be the only one who remembers his dreams, so he does. He wants a comment about how regeneration is a little like death, so he has Wilf bring that up (maybe I'm wrong, but... when did Ten and Wilf ever discuss the intricacies of Time Lord regeneration? It's not like Wilf ever saw him regenerate. He might have mentioned it to Donna but not until they'd started travelling together regularly, and IIRC, she seemed pretty surprised about the whole thing when it looked about to happen). He wants Ten and the Master to have a long chase, so they sense each other Highlander style. He wants Lucy to have a moment of redemption, so he makes her have planned a way to disrupt his resurrection. None of it makes sense, but he doesn't care, he wants his plot and damn the consequences! The man can not plot. He can write the occasional nice character moment, but that should be the basic requirement of being a professional writer, not something where basic competency at it is expected to make up for your deficiency in other areas of writing. Le Sigh.
Anyway, I'll move on to the good. I know I'm probably in the minority of this, but I actually liked the Master's Master Race thing at the end. It was ridiculous, but it was pleasantly ridiculous, unlike the rest, which was just... wha?
If you take out all the crap, you've got the seed of an idea which is pretty good. The Master returns, and his plans accidentally open the door for the Time Lords and a universe-destroying threat. But as always it's the how. And the how pretty well sucked.
I also liked the Time Lord's return, even though I kind of saw it coming. Aside from the Daleks, Cybermen, Davros, and the Master, the Time Lords as a group are the last possible "big bad" for Ten, really. Every other enemy are just the sort of "every day" enemy, that the Doctor might be in a little danger but it's not a big deal. But this group are, to me, the only ones left for whom even the Doctor really worries when they get involved.
I'm not a super fan of the "last of the Time Lords" mojo the Doctor's had since the rebooted series. I prefer him being a renegade from his people who can and will get involved if he becomes a pain, and sometimes send him to do something instead of just wandering around coming upon trouble wherever he goes.
Also, having Time Lords return is probably the only plausible way for the Master to get a new Tardis, and he needs one in order to be an ongoing threat who could pop up at any time. And I think, if they stick around, Moffat could probably do well with them being in existence. I hope we don't get TOO detailed a look at the Time War, because I do not want RTD handling that. I do want to see it, but I don't want it from him.
I'm calling it now. I'm probably wrong, but what the hell. Timothy Dalton is... THE VALEYARD! He even looks a little like him!
I'm also calling Wilf as another Time Lord in hiding with a fobwatch type device, which makes Donna genetically part Time Lord (it's was just technobabblicly suppressed until she got zapped with Ten's energy) which will let her survive the Time Lord memories she got from Ten's meta-crisis..
In other Doctor Who news, I also completed one of my major geek life goals. I've now watched (or read a transcript of) every Classic Who episode. Yay, me! My Doctor Who credentials are now no longer a source of secret shame! I won't go on to the audios or novels, not because I doubt there's some good stuff there, but a) I think at this point it's generally established they're non-canon, and b) the things that annoy me about Doctor Who, I think would REALLY REALLY REALLY annoy me in book form. I hold books to a higher standard than TV. And I suppose there's a c), too. I've always found audios hard to process. I'm more visual, I suppose. If my eyes aren't engaged, my mind wanders and the sound just sort of becomes a vague backdrop to something else. There've been many times that I've wanted to listen to something and got up and started reading something halfway through while it was still playing, just because my eyes needed to do something.
So, let's talk about Seven.
The Doctor: I quite liked McCoy's incarnation of the Doctor. He's a little quirky, has a dark side, but is still pleasant enough to be around that I could see travelling with. On my scale of "Doctors I'd most like to travel with", he's probably above Two, not counting companions, below if companions get included. They're quite similar. On the watchability scale, not counting the quality of the stories, the Doctor's entertaining enough that
The Stories: Here's the big problem with Seven's run. The stories just... well, stank. Even the best of the run were the ones that would have been the mediocre stories of any other run. I think the best was Remembrance of the Daleks. Curse of Fenric wasn't bad, Battlefield was okay if only for the Brigadier, but everything else was pretty lame. I have a bit of a perverse fondness for Paradise Towers, even though I should by all accounts dislike it.
The rest? There was a lot of awful stuff. And, it felt very 80s. You know how there are certain plots that crop up on every SF show? A repeating Groundhog Day time loop, for example, or the paralell world. Well, some of McCoy's run felt like they were running through the 80s examples of those: Paradise Towers "OMG A HUGE SKYSCRAPER IN WHICH CIVILIZATION HAS FALLEN"... Happiness Patrol: Happiness is Mandatory (somehow that concept feels extremely 80s-SF, even if the Prisoner did it best in the 60s). A circus with a RAPPING RINGMASTER! AND EVIL CLOWNS!
They also suffered a lot, from some degree or another, to sort of jumpy plotlines with dodgy resolutions. Or maybe that was in part my lack of interest in the plot and missing points. Either way, a failure on their part. The biggest one was where the Doctor and Mel team up with charming rogue Sabalom Glitz, and Mel sticks around to keep him out of trouble at the end... uhm, the guy SOLD HIS CREW to an evil guy who turned them into automatons. And you knew that all along. At the very best, even if you ignore the thefts and probable murders he committed, you just ran off to have jolly space adventures with a guy who sold people into slavery.
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is possibly my pick for the worst Doctor Who ever, even thought I did like Mags (and, even though I knew it would never happened, kind of wish she would have been a companion).
The Companions: Only two of them, Mel and Ace. Mel got a little annoying at times, but otherwise she fits into the mold of "generic 20th century modern companion girl" . Seriously, if I hadn't read in a wiki that she was a computer scientist, I'd never have known. She was just average girl, good for screaming and a kind word, an occasional plucky rescue and reminding the Doctor to do his exercises. I will not remember her for much in a few years. Ace, on the other hand, was a bit of a pleasant surprise, especially after such an inauspicious beginning. I mean seriously, her acting (or the direction of such) in her debut episode, Dragonfire, was SO BAD I worried her whole run would be unbearable. But she improved dramatically by the next time around, and by the end, I actually quite liked her. Her obsession with blowing things up was kind of fun, and they did some nice work exploring her family and personal history. She's one of those companions I wouldn't mind seeing them revisit in the new series, to reveal what she's been up to (several alternative fates have been explored in various media, but they're all no-canon) or how she left the Doctor.
So, let's do my personal rankings. I'm going to leave 8 out of the rankings entirely because he only had one movie to go on (and the audios and books which, as I said, I'll not be going into). It's just too hard to place him based on that, I got very little sense of him, and it was all immediately post-regeneration. Otherwise, we go Best-to-Worst.
Best run, classic (it's a little unfair to directly compare runs from the new and old series): Davison's. Great stories and great companions make up for a somewhat bland (though still likeable) Doctor. Followed by: Two, Four, One, Six, Seven, and Three.
Best Doctor: (ignoring story quality, just performance and Doctorish-ness alone)
Most Like to Watch: Four, Nine, Seven, Two, Ten, Five, One, Six, Three
Most Like to Travel With (solo): Five, Nine, Ten, Four, Seven, Two, One, Three, Six
Best Companions:
Teams: Zoe and Jaime, followed by Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa, followed by Romana and K-9, followed by Ian, Susan, and Barbara. All other teams aren't really memorable.
Individual rankings: This is really hard to do. There are so many of them. So I'm just going to name my favorites and my least favorites without an attempt to rank them. Everybody else is in the middle.
Favorites: Jack, Mickey, Jaime, Zoe, Donna, K-9, Leela, Tegan
Least Favorites: Turlough, Peri, Rose (only because she seemed to become selfish at the end of her run, like her love for the Doctor was the only thing that mattered in the universe), Kamelion (poorly handled)
Unmemorables: These are the characters who are so forgettable that I can barely recall anything they've done. I can't say they're bad, but they've made very little impression on me: Steven Taylor, Dodo Chaplet, Polly, Ben Jackson, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant.
Likely to join the unmemorables after enough time has passed: Mel, Martha (pleasant and all but I don't think I'm going to recall her very well in say, 10 years, unless she keeps popping up), Harry Sullivan
(Notice a trend? Most of them are "contemporary human companions")
Now that I'm finished Old School Doctor Who, I'll need something new to watch weekend mornings. I suppose I could catch up on some movies I've been missing.
Oh, Movies, I almost forgot. I've seen some recently. Saw Avatar over the weekend. It's pretty much like I've been hearing in the reviews. Looks fantastic, not just effects, but the whole design of all the creatures of the world. Story, not so much. Kind of an old story, which isn't bad, but I'd hoped for more. Supposedly Cameron has two sequels planned, but if he does, I hope (speculative spoilers ahoy) that he abandons the Na'vi completely. I hope the Avatar concept is explored on a completely NEW world where Avatars are used, but with a completely different story, not involving a person going 'native', but just... something else that explores the limits of that technology. Or maybe somebody getting accidentally trapped inside his Avatar and having to adapt to no longer being human. I mean, you could do a lot with it - have a technologically advanced, but hostile, alien species, for example, and send an Avatar in on a spy mission.
I know it's a longshot, but you never know, Cameron does seem to have a thing for exploring human 'enhancement' through artificial bodies (from the exoskeleton loaders in Aliens to the Avatars, to the ride-inside warbots of the military in Avatars).
I also can't wait till this level of effects filters down into regular TV budget range, it would be a great way to make much better looking aliens.
Also finally got around to seeing Zombieland, with Woody Harrleson and... a couple other people who's names I never got. Unfortunately some of the best and most surprising bits had been pre-spoiled for me, but still, it's an awful fun comedic zombie movie. Maybe not a Shaun of the Dead level, but a lot of fun. I don't think I ever laughed out loud, but I had a smile on my face pretty well consistently, and would love to see sequels.
And, before I go, like I mentioned last post, I got a gift certificate from the comic store, and I'm planning on going down there in a few days, so I'm throwing it open... any recommendations? I'm not 100% sure if I'll go for TPB collections or some kind of merchandise, or a combination of the two, but I'm open for suggestions if there's something you think is really not to be missed. I may not take your advice, but I'll consider it, and maybe it'll remind me of something I'd always wanted to get but had forgotten about.
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Date: 2009-12-28 09:21 pm (UTC)And I could really have done without the Master's superpowers, but I have absolutely no problem with the idea that he would brainwash some people into thinking they were part of an ancient cult dedicated to his resurrection, just in case. (And I am absolutely convinced that that's all that happened).
I do think you're too hard on Davies, though he's certainly got his flaws. But this isn't an episode I'd use to defend him; as you say, the worst of his tics are on display here. Honestly, none of the stories this year felt particularly well-polished.
Still, I like Simm's portrayal of the Master when he's not bouncing around like a Power Ranger, I really like Tennant as an actor, and I like Bernard Cribbins. And I'm really curious about where they're going with the Time Lord reveal.
(I cannot possibly defend the Obama stuff, though. that was dire. Though my girlfriend liked the satirical aspects of, for example, the President of the U.S. apparently being that big a deal in England.)